the kind of article that keeps me subscribing to the magazine although I
don't read more than two issues a year. This one is on the future of Israel
and asks the brutal question, is Israel finished? It is very much worth your
reading. Israel made some very fundamental errors during its growth. Some
were silly: alienating the Christian Arabs and driving them into the arms of
the Palestinian Moslems was perhaps the most fundamental. The Christian
Arabs would have welcomed the Israelis as liberators had the Israelis cared
to take that role. Instead they have ignored the Christian Arab communities
at best and persecuted them as about as often as not, with bureaucratic
nonsense like losing building permits, and failure to enforce court
evictions of Jewish squatters in Christian hospitals; the list could
continue.

The settlement issues have brought about an indefensible border: and the
Palestinians are out breeding the Israelis. It will not be many years before
the Jews are a minority in the Jewish State; at which point it ceases to be
Jewish or ceases to be a democracy, since just about all the Arabs will vote
en bloc first for a secular state, then...

As to why this is important: given domestic US policies, the US has no
choice but to be both a friend and protector of Israel. No other policy is
possible. We have and will pledge blood, treasure, military equipment, and
just plain subsidies to Israel, and there is nothing that can or will be
done about it; take this as a given. This limits the number of real allies
we can have in the Middle East to secular Muslims, and few Royal States. The
chief ally we had was the Shah of Iran, but Jimmy Carter threw him to the
wolves, and we had to try to make do with Saddam Hussein (Baathist;
secular). That didn't work in part due to the sheer incompetence of the
Foreign Service bureaucracy (See the Iron Law of Bureaucracy), and the
result was the first and second Bush Gulf Wars, both expensive and needless
and the second leading to the quagmire dilemma in which we find ourselves
today. The Second Gulf War might have been won had not the amazingly
incompetent Bremer been sent to make sure we would lose. That may not have
been the intention, but it was certainly the result. He may be the greatest
fool of a pro-consul in the history of Iraq, and that includes Lucullus who
lost all his legions.

Thus the US has few possible allies: the secular Turks, who are NOT
democrats, being the chief potential allies; but we are alienating them as
we continue to try to build a Kurdish state. Kurds and Turks are ethnically
very different people. Kurds are not Arabs, nor are they Turks. They are
more closely related to the Iranians (Land of the Aryans) than anyone else
over there. Saladin, who destroyed the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
established in the First Crusade, and whose interactions with Richard Lion
Heart form a sage not forgotten over there -- mothers still frighten their
children with threats of Melanch Rich -- is fondly remembered. Saladin
united the Arabs under the Kurds, threw out the Christians, and rebuilt some
of the lost glory of the Caliphate. This was before the appearance of the
Turks.

The Israelis no longer know what their goals are; they are a divided
people. Israel was originally to be a safe haven for Jews following the
Holocaust. Never Again.

I recommend the article itself, which requires a subscription; meanwhile
the Jerusalem Post summary is worth your time. I will try to get comments
from Joel Rosenberg, whose views I respect.

==================

Joel Rosenberg
Responds

Subject: The future of Israel, lost car keys, and such

Jerry, this is awfully long, particularly for a first
round. If you think that it needs to be edited, feel free to either cut out
what you think is extraneous, or tell me what sort of stuff you'd like me to
cut.

Let's start at the beginning, with your
preface/introduction -- I'll get to the Jeffrey Goldberg piece later, and
give it short shrift, because you're making a lot more sense and asking much
better questions than he is.

The settlement issues have brought about an
indefensible border: and the Palestinians are out breeding the Israelis. It
will not be many years before the Jews are a minority in the Jewish State;
at which point it ceases to be Jewish or ceases to be a democracy, since
just about all the Arabs will vote en bloc first for a secular state,
then...

As to why this is important: given domestic US
policies, the US has no choice but to be both a friend and protector of
Israel. No other policy is possible. We have and will pledge blood,
treasure, military equipment, and just plain subsidies to Israel, and there
is nothing that can or will be done about it; take this as a given. This
limits the number of real allies we can have in the Middle East to secular
Muslims, and few Royal States. The chief ally we had was the Shah of Iran,
but Jimmy Carter threw him to the wolves, and we had to try to make do with
Saddam Hussein (Baathist; secular). That didn't work in part due to the
sheer incompetence of the Foreign Service bureaucracy (See the Iron Law of
Bureaucracy), and the result was the first and second Bush Gulf Wars, both
expensive and needless and the second leading to the quagmire dilemma in
which we find ourselves today. The Second Gulf War might have been won had
not the amazingly incompetent Bremer been sent to make sure we would lose.
That may not have been the intention, but it was certainly the result. He
may be the greatest fool of a pro-consul in the history of Iraq, and that
includes Lucullus who lost all his legions.

Thus the US has few possible allies: the secular
Turks, who are NOT democrats, being the chief potential allies; but we are
alienating them as we continue to try to build a Kurdish state. Kurds and
Turks are ethnically very different people. Kurds are not Arabs, nor are
they Turks. They are more closely related to the Iranians (Land of the
Aryans) than anyone else over there. Saladin, who destroyed the Latin
Kingdom of Jerusalem established in the First Crusade, and whose
interactions with Richard Lion Heart form a saga not forgotten over there --
mothers still frighten their children with threats of Melanch Rich -- is
fondly remembered. Saladin united the Arabs under the Kurds, threw out the
Christians, and rebuilt some of the lost glory of the Caliphate. This was
before the appearance of the Turks.

The Israelis no longer know what their goals are; they
are a divided people. Israel was originally to be a safe haven for Jews
following the Holocaust. Never Again.

There's not a lot I'd argue with you in that, but
there is some. I'm less certain than you are about the domestic political
necessity. Selling out an ally that one has committed to be a friend and
protector of is something that the US has done before, and while I wish it
were otherwise, I think it could be done again, with Israel. Not easily, and
not overtly.

But it's been tried, and recently; the Baker
Commission didn't actually do that -- the policies weren't implemented . . .
but James Baker sure gave it a good try, eh? Obama's recently-kinda-sorta-fired
foreign policy advisor, Samantha Power, went even further -- while she later
denied it, she was, at one point, arguing for a US-imposed military
solution. Anybody who thinks that, say, dropping the 82nd Airborne in on
Jerusalem is going to be good for anybody should only be listened to by her
psychiatrist. (And she wasn't fired over that; she was fired over using a
mean word about Hillary.)

I think the problem is that too many people who think
themselves hard-headed pragmatists don't grasp the import of your
last-but-one paragraph, above. In the region the US has very few possible
reliable allies, and needs at least one very badly, at least until
space-borne solar power satellites come on line. (Neither of us will live to
see that; some of our children might.)

As to the allies, I've long been sympathetic to the
problems of the Kurds, and it may be my sympathy talking as well as my
intellect, but I think that there is a huge opportunity there -- if we stop
selling them out, as George HW Bush did, foolishly, at the advice of that
same slimy idiot, James Baker (strong language to follow) -- as well as the
costs you point to.

I've been saying since 1991 that we have reached the
right moment in history to settle the problem of Kurdistan, to the benefit
of US security. You argue, and persuasively, that our alliance with Turkey
is weakened because of our support for the Kurds -- who they would just as
soon wipe out.

I think it's more likely doomed because of the
Islamist surge there. Yes, in the past the Turkish army has come out of the
barracks, hanged a few folks, and then gone back to the barracks, but unless
we see some dangling mullahs soon there, I doubt that we ever will, at least
not in time to make any difference.

I hope I'm wrong, but I think that Turkey -- which
doesn't share our values, and has been acting for quite some time as though
they don't think that they need us -- is heading for the Islamist crapper.
That's going to be messy.

The best ally is one who shares our values, has
resources of their own that we can use, and knows that they need us. The
Kurds score pretty well on that.

Yes, I know I'm advocating a dramatic change in US
policy in re: Kurdistan, so let me be specific about what I'm advocating: as
Iraq fails (and I think that the Iraqis are demonstrably intent on failure,
collectively, although certainly there are some small-d democrats and
various leaders who are not), we shift our support from a federated Iraq to
the Kurds; if the Turks play nice, they get to keep Turkish Kurdistan, and
-- as long as they play nice -- we undertake to keep our Kurdish allies, who
need us, from making moves on Turkish Kurdistan.

Yes, there's also Iranian Kurdistan. And, IMHO, while
Iran is under the thumb of the mad mullahs -- and with them going nuclear,
that's not just a local problem -- I see that as a problem of
implementation, not principle.

Which, by a long route, brings me back to what you
were asking me about -- the future of Israel, and the Goldberg piece.
(Remember when Isaac Asimov wrote a book called "The Neutrino" when it was
somewhere like two-thirds of the way through until he got to the chapter
"Enter the Neutrino" and his editor wrote, in the margin, and it's about
time?)

As I've written more than a few times, the borders are
a huge problem, given the neighborhood. You and I live in a country with two
indefensible borders. One is, at present, seen as a huge problem in our
local politics, not our military planning; the other is, theoretical issues
around smuggling of nuclear weapons in, no problem at all.

Why? By and large, it's not because we've got a
powerful military. As powerful as the US military is, it can't be used to
protect our borders from individual incursions. The Customs folks talk about
stopping some percentage of illegal aliens who want to sneak in and pick
fruit for cheap, and maybe they'll get better than that, or maybe not -- but
they don't have a chance in hell of stopping thousands of self-detonating
Mexicans who want to kill a bunch of American schoolkids as they blow
themselves up.

Fortunately, we don't have to deal with that problem,
at present; we've got good neighbors. My Israeli cousins would purely love
to have the worst problem with their worst neighbor being the desire of many
of the neighbor's nationals to sneak in and pick fruit. (That is, of course,
what the Arabs of Gaza should be wanting to do, but . . . )

Israel's neighbors suck rocks. One is about to start
eating those rocks -- Gaza is a demographic nightmare of, well, biblical
proportions, that is only getting worse because of the foreign aid; Judea
and Samaria are not as bad, but declining. The Gaza border is straight and
well-defended; increasing use of counterbattery fire and decreasing worry
about the fate of the Gazan human body armor can handle the missiles
whenever there's a will. The Judea/Samaria border is twistier, more crooked,
and less defensible than a Barack Obama race relations speech, although the
Fence is demonstrably helping a whole lot. Transjordan has its own
demographic crisis looming -- while the British don't seem to mind being
reigned over by those Germans, it's hard to see how the "Palestinian"
majority is going to forever consent to be ruled over by the Hashemites.
Syria? About the only thing that the Ophthalmologist of Death seems to have
inherited from his father is the shortsightedness and the brutality.
Lebanon? We've been around the block on Lebanon before; it sucks, and the
sucking sound is getting less attention these days, but it's getting louder.

I've been hearing predictions about the demographic
doom of Israel since I was old enough to pay attention, which came pretty
young. If you plot the trendlines out, there's no question as to whether or
not there will be a demographic doom, and it would, at best, be a very small
number of years away from arrival now if the influx of Soviet refugees
hadn't arrived.

But they did. In a move that seems to repeat itself
historically, the Soviet Union made life uncomfortable enough for Jews that
the bulk of my people left. (And not all that much later, there wasn't a
Soviet Union. Seems I can remember that happening before, from time to time.
Historically, that's not quite as foolish a move as trying to murder my
people wholesale -- see any Amalekites lately? Assyrians? Yeah, the
Philistines are hanging around, but . . . . )

The thing with demographic predictions is that they
only affect what happens if you've got all the relevant present factors
figured in, and then calculate appropriately. Did Paul Erlich do that?
You've got the expertise to evaluate that; I'd love to hear your answer.

But let's assume he was honest in his math. So why
aren't those hundreds of millions of Indians dead from famine, and wars
around famine? Something significant happened that wasn't in his model:
Norman Borlaug.

Significant things are happening every day.

Let me tell you how a significant change could change
the whole picture. The Jimmy Carter / James Baker / Condi Rice plan is that
(I'm not sure how) an independent Palestinian state can, with enough outside
help, and sufficient concessions from Israel, become a viable state, and, as
the saying goes, a "partner for peace."

I'll not, for the sake of argument, put an umbrella in
George Bush's hand at the signing ceremony for the next list of concessions,
and a word balloon over his head that says that he's brought "peace in our
time." Instead, I'll assume that it works. The viable state -- don't ask me
how a state including Gaza becomes viable, although magic will be required;
we'll assume that Niven shows up with a batch of mana to correspond to the
mannah that'll fall from heaven during the interim -- establishes itself,
and becomes an economic and intellectual powerhouse. Sure, it doesn't
achieve carrying capacity in terms of land and fishing -- but New York City,
Singapore, and Hong Kong donít grow much of any of their own food, either.

And then, demands for further concessions whither
away, and . . .

Well, no, I'm not fooling anybody: the Palestinian
state is doomed. The overpopulated death cult can only achieve its ambitions
through grabbing more and more lebensraum, and, hell, the Egyptians wouldn't
even give them a chunk of Sinai. Transjordan? Over the Hashemites' dead
bodies, maybe -- been tried before -- but not otherwise.

So let's reframe the unsolvable demographic problem
from 5.4 million Israeli Jews, 1.3 million Israeli Arabs, and 1.4 million
Arabs in Gaza, two million more in Judea and Samaria, and accept that the
problems of the latter are unsolvable, and not the responsibility of the US
or Israel to solve. (Whose job is it to make the horse sing?)

From that frame of reference, the demographics don't
look bad. For the Israelis -- Jewish, Arab Muslim, Arab Christian, and Druse
-- that is.

The Palestinians of the territories? Yup, it does suck
to be them -- and the Gazans are busily demonstrating that at an accelerated
pace, but it's still the same trend: every concession -- bilateral, as in
Olso, or unilateral in Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza -- that Israel has made
to the Arabs of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza has worsened the situation there.
The hated occupation was replaced by the Arafat kleptocracy, which has
itself splintered into the Fatah mismanaged Judea and Samaria and the
galactically stupidly mismanaged Hamas wasteland of Gaza.

Let me suggest that that's only Israel's problem --
and only the US's problem -- if both of the two countries let it be. The
silence of the horse is only an insoluble problem for somebody who agrees
that the horse must learn to sing.

I don't think it will. I think that the future of
Israel depends on cutting away the Palestinians of the territories and
letting them fail to solve their own problems. Because they -- regardless of
what help and/or pressure is applied -- will fail.

I've spent most of this talking about the region in
general and your framing of the problems -- agreeing in part, and
disagreeing in part -- because, well, that's interesting. Goldberg's piece?
Enh.

He talked to the feckless Olmert -- once a very good
mayor, but who demonstrated during the time of our last dialog on the
subject that he was not ready for prime time leadership in a country at war.
(I thought otherwise early in the Lebanon War; I was clearly wrong.) And
then to a few leftist -- talented -- but reflexively defeatist -- Israeli
writers. Amos Oz is a stone brilliant writer, but he's been wedded to the
whole "two state solution" thing (which presumes a viable Arab state west of
the Jordan) since 1967, and the facts on the ground over forty years haven't
wised him up. He still thinks of the problem as a real estate dispute, where
you can split the difference and work out an easement, and not an
existential matter.

AB Yehoshua? He's got a bad case of the all-too-common
Jewish disease of blaming judenhass on Jews. You can get a flavor of it from
his Wikipedia entry:

"The Palestinians are in a situation of insanity
reminiscent of the insanity of the German people in the Nazi period. The
Palestinians are not the first people that the Jewish people has driven
insane." Subsequent clarification by Yehoshua: "I ask myself a question that
must be asked: What brought the Germans and what is bringing the
Palestinians to such hatred of us? Ö We have a tough history. We came here
out of a Jewish experience, and the settlements are messing it up."

I submit that looking to AB Yehoshua for political
wisdom is like looking for the car keys you dropped outside under a
neighboring street's streetlight. Granted, you won't find them there, but
the light will be better. At least he sees the Nazi/Pallie analogy.

As to Grossman . . . I'm going to restrain myself. My
people have a tradition that when a mourner speaks out of grief, we let it
pass.

Well, this is already long enough, and we haven't even
gotten to the key issue in all of this: there is going to be a nuclear war
in the Middle East in the next five to ten years, and it's probably about
time to decide whether, in the final analysis, the US will be worse off with
the mushroom clouds going up just over Iran, instead of Iran and other
places.

I do not as cavalierly dismiss Jonah Goldberg's article, but I do
understand why you consign Olmert to the dustbin. I am more concerned with
how we escape nuclear war in the Middle East. If there are to be mushroom
clouds, whose will they be? But that can wait to a later comment.

At one time I advocated a unilateral Israel solution to the situation of
the West Bank (or Judea and Samaria, if you will: build a wall that includes
everything Israel claims, and get out. Make it clear that attacks from
inside the wall will be met with ruthless counter battery fire that will
definitely cause civilian casualties; and continued operations against
Israel will me met with counter operations that include stealth unmanned
aircraft with Hellfire rockets; selective assassinations; and if need be
ground incursions by armored columns.

In other words, Gaza and the West Bank are on their own. If they can
achieve a state, then so be it; but if they cause Israeli casualties, they
will pay for them.

At one time this looked to be the policy Israel would adopt (I doubt they
got the idea from me, although I did discuss it with President Weizman); but
now there are settlements and outposts beyond the wall.

I do ask you to say more on the subject of Settlements and Outposts.

==============

Joel Rosenberg responds:

Settlements...

I have the strong opinion that when many people talk
about settlements they're talking past each other; I'm going to start off
with some basics, not because I don't think you know all this stuff -- I
know you do -- but because I want to be clear as to what I'm talking about.

One quick side note, before I start: anybody who wants
to claim -- as George H. W. Bush and the despicable James Baker did, that
the settlements are an obstacle to peace, has to deal with the fact that in
all of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Sinai, and the Golan, there was not a
single Jewish settlement prior to just about 1968, and there was no peace.
There may be some way to explain around that -- but it's worth noting that
the people who take that position don't seem to spend any doing with that.
They just keep changing the subject, whether it's Baker or Saeb Erakat or
Jimmy Carter. Yup; some American politicians do have a fixation about them.

These days, discussion of the settlements is usually
divided between three or four sorts: the string around the Jordanian
territorial boundary, the expansion around metro Jerusalem, and all the rest
lumped together, plus various "outposts". That last is a fairly flexible
term that can mean either a fairly large number of very small settlements --
usually established in violation of Israeli law by religious Jews who
plopped one or more trailers on top of a hill somewhere other than those
places, or all other settlements.

That discussion always omits the two dozen abandoned
settlements -- all of those in Sinai, all of those in Gaza, and the several
that were abandoned in Samaria in 2005 as part of the Israeli withdrawal. I
think there's a lot to be learned from those abandoned settlements. I'll get
to some small part of that shortly.

The discussion usually omits three key settlements
along the North-South mountainous spine of the area: Beitar Illit, Ariel,
Ma'ale Adumim, each of which has a very different provenance, but which, I
think, are important both in and of themselves and collectively.

The abandoned settlements serve only as a largely
ignored historical lesson. Not a simple historical lesson; Israel has had
both gains and losses around the abandonment of each of the groups in those
two dozen. One theory -- with that least some apparent validity -- is that
at least some of these settlements were just too expensive to defend, and
unnecessarily provocative. I think the best illustration of how that theory
fails is Gaza -- instead of defending the Gaza settlements, the IDF is
defending Ashkelon and Sderot. Whatever the gains of the Gaza withdrawal
have been -- and, as I said, I think it makes a lot of sense for Israel to
cut itself loose from the ongoing Malthusian crisis in Gaza; it's in
insoluble problem -- it's hard to justify in terms of lack of military
drain. Where have those supposedly freed troops gone?

I think the settlements along the Jordan are utterly
essential, for obvious reasons, some of them embedded in 242 and 338. When
you have anything but great neighbors, defensible boundaries aren't a
luxury. Israel has, on the east, no strategic depth even with the boundary
at the Jordan River; the settlements provide at least some tactical depth.
It is within living memory when the Jordan River was regularly crossed by
fedayeen, supported by the Transjordanian government, and not locking that
down so that terrorists and weapons can be smuggled through with impunity
would be utterly insane. International control? We've seen how well that
works on the Egypt/Gaza border. It doesn't. International monitors have been
at best been useless, and when they haven't, the Gaza/Egypt fence has simply
been blown up.

So, I think the importance of those Jordan valley
settlements is both great, and obvious. That was established, I think, in
1973. It was a close thing as it was, but add a weak eastern border, and the
temptation for the Jordanians to get involved again might have been
irresistible. Certainly a foolish risk for Israel to take.

The settlements -- and the fence -- protecting
Jerusalem are obviously of benefit. The problem here isn't positioning of
armies as much as screening out the self-detonating shahids.

Again, my guiding principle in this is that the
Palestinian Authority is not merely failed -- that's easy, and obvious --
but doomed, and that Israeli policy must be to insulate Israel from that
doom.

But defense alone doesn't win a war. A line defense --
whether the line is Maginot or Bar Lev -- will fail unless accompanied by
mobile, active measures, when necessary. It would be interesting to see a
Harry Turtledove novel of World War II assuming that the French had
maintained the Maginot Line and, instead of letting the Nazis swinging
through Belgium, had done the Blitzkrieg in reverse, using their better
tanks (yes, they would've had to add radios) and preemptively attacking.

Which is the key point of the -- term used generally
-- outpost settlements. In addition to defending themselves, those provide
places to deploy Israeli troops for what are going to be necessary attacks
on various Palestinian terrorist enterprises. Strategic and tactical depth
apply to more conventional warfare; dealing with terrorism is, often, a
knife fight, at arms length, and you'd better decide where you want your
arms.

And, by the way, in many cases, the settlers
themselves do a pretty darned good job of handling low-level terrorist
attacks. They'd do a better job if they didn't continually have Israeli
governments putting a foot on the settlers' shoulders, but I digress.

Twenty years ago, even, I would have said that the
threat of creation and expansion of new settlements could have served as an
impetus for the Arabs -- collectively -- to get their act together, on the
ground that some sort of encapsulated Palestinian quasi-state might be
viable if they acted promptly and intelligently. Actually give up terrorism
as an institution of quasi-state policy, get their educational system going,
and accept that their dreams of driving the Jews into the sea needed to go
on the dustbin of history, along with other misbegotten theories like the
Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere, or the Thousand Year Reich. But I
think it's far too late for that. By the time that Arafat turned down just
that deal when Bill Clinton offered it to him, it wouldn't have worked. The
failure of Oslo had already demonstrated that; repacking the Clinton plan as
"the Road Map"? Same turned wine, in a recycled bottle, with a new label.

So, other than the religious components -- which I'll
address in a moment -- I think that the key parts of the settlements are
essential to Israel's survival, and that the further scattering of
settlements -- including the outposts -- are much more of a mixed bag. I
think that territorial compactness, to some extent -- with the exception of
the three key settlements along the rocky spine -- has both pluses and
minuses, but that, considered in a vacuum, the pluses are greater.

That said, I think any new settlements should be
examined tactically and strategically; while a few religious settlers
putting a couple of trailers on a hilltop can -- and has -- have some
definite pluses, the costs are there, too.

But, as you say, it appears to drive the Palestinians
of the failed state a little crazy. That said, cessation of settlement
activity has never calmed them down. That's one of those concessions I was
talking about that has ever and always been met by an increase in terrorism.

So, at last, we get to the new outposts. And there,
all in all, I don't see a lot of strategical or tactical advantage.

But I see even less advantage to the Israeli
government working as hard as they have been -- much less harder -- on
quashing them. As the decline of Judea and Samaria continues -- and all the
trend lines are bad -- it's going to continue to be much of a side issue.

In principle? George Will put it well, many years ago,
when he said that while there was something obscene about requiring some
part of Judea or Samaria to be judenrein, there was no necessary reason that
the Jews living there had to be under an Israeli government. A Palestinian
government that was prepared to accept a small Jewish minority? I know that
sounds strange, given the events of the past many years, but it's utterly
strange that it should sound strange. Israel is expected to have a large
Arab minority, and the one Israeli politician who argued that that was, in
the long run, untenable, was thrown out of the Knesset. If there were to be
a viable Palestinian state -- and yes, it's obvious that that will never
happen -- as a thought experiment: what would be so very bad about a small
number of Jewish residents/citizens? So unacceptable that it's not even
possible for the Palestinians to entertain the thought?

But we all know that that wouldn't be allowed. And I
think that, in and of itself, even without all of the other mountains of
evidence, shows that removing any settlements as a concession to the
Palestinians is, on a very good day, counterproductive.

Over to you.

-- Joel Rosenberg

========

Pournelle Responds

First an historical observation. My only trip to Israel was in 1998, when
there was something like peace. We were able to travel freely, to Bethany,
Jericho, along the Jordan River to Galilee, and generally wherever we wanted
to go. It did look for a while as if peace were breaking out.

We interviewed the Mayor of Bethlehem, and I later met with him in his
office; there was a portrait of his Chairman Arafat on the wall above him.
He was Christian.

His complaints were two: first, the settlements in the Shepherd Hills
around Bethlehem. They were simple land grabs with no legal justification
whatever and their effect was ethnic cleansing of Christians from Bethlehem.
Within a decade, he said, there would no longer be a significant number of
Christians in Bethlehem, and he considered the settlements on every hilltop,
with outpost connecting them, to be ethnic cleansing.

I note that his prediction was correct. There are not very many
Christians left in Bethlehem, and all the productive farmlands -- mostly
olive groves -- have been either taken over by Settlements, or destroyed by
vandals (the former land owners would say Settlers).

His second complaint was the check point on the highway to Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was itself surrounded by settlements. Some of those were the new
hilltop settlements around Bethlehem, particularly those between Bethlehem
and Jerusalem. These clearly had the purpose of making sure that the region
remain in Israel no matter what land concessions might be made. That wasn't
the second complaint (it was part of the first). The complaint was the utter
arrogance of those manning the check point, and the needless humiliation of
those seeking to travel between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
I discussed some of this in
previous dialogues. There were long delays, most of them pointless, and
appeared to be largely for the purpose of humiliating those travelling that
road. Our tour bus required only five minutes, but the Palestinian Christian
husband -- an MD -- of one of our tour members was delayed two hours getting
through that check point; again for no discernible purpose.

Israel could have enlisted the Christian Arabs -- both those in the
original Israel and those in Judea and Samaria after that conquest -- as
allies. They chose to make them enemies, and drive them into the arms of the
Muslim Arabs, which is an unnatural alliance. Whatever the reasons for those
policies, Israel will now reap what they sowed.

The Israel dilemma remains: the Arabs are outbreeding the Jews. The exact
year in which the Arabs outnumber the Jews is debatable but no one doubts it
is coming. When that day arrives, Israel must cease to be Jewish or cease to
be a democracy. Either the Arabs must be disenfranchised, or they will vote
for first a secular state, then impose by strictly democratic means various
Muslim based codes. Of course it will never get that far. Someone will begin
shooting.

I have no notion of what Israel must do about this. I do know that their
internal policies toward Christian Arab communities in Galilee, are not
designed to endear the Christian Arabs to the Israeli government. I have
seen that first hand: business permits lost, enormous taxes on equipment
donations to Christian colleges (but which would be waived if the donation
were to Hebrew University), etc. I doubt any of that will be forgotten.

The original question was, is Israel finished?

The United States cannot allow Israel to be finished; which is why this
is an important question for us.

The other dilemma is Iran: the best US policy toward Iran is to have as
few confrontations as possible while allowing our Cultural Weapons of Mass
Destruction to operate. I would add to that: contests which allow Iranian
teenagers to win a million iPods and blue jeans and PDA's with web access.
The coming generation in Iran is not particularly anti-American and isn't
terribly interested in the mullahs. Of course that would change if we
dropped bombs on Iran. People resent being bombed. They also resent being
invaded. But time is on our side in Iran so long as we don't attack.

The mullahs, on the other hand, are losing, and some of them see that.
They would welcome a US attack as a means of consolidating their rule.

How long after Iran acquires nuclear weapons before a mad mullah decides
to turn Iran into a suicide bomber by detonating that nuke in Tel Aviv? And
can anyone do anything about that?